Ride Run Weekend

This weekend was a whirlwind of outdoor activities for me. On Saturday was the I-580 "opening" - an event that allowed walkers, runners and cyclists the opportunity to get on the new freeway portion between Reno and Carson City. I connected up with a few other cyclists and hit the roads from home to ride the new stretch. All told the ride was a nice 41 miles for me, with some good offshoot climbs in Washoe Valley on the way back. You know, because 41 miles is simply not enough as it is. The freeway will be nice once it opens for realz sometime in the next month. It'll make my daily trip to the kids' school a faster and more pleasant experience with freeway speeds the entire distance, and eliminating a couple of typically long stoplights.

I estimate a few thousand people participated while I was there, and only a few idiots who thought weaving through crowds impressed us all with their biking prowess. I did spot one teen girl wearing her helmet backwards, but couldn't get to my phone fast enough to snap a pic.  I did snap a few other photos though.

Abbey on her mountain bike!

Mt. Rose in the distance.

The "bridge" and Mt. Rose ski area.

Chuck, who's making me a better cyclist every ride.

That's a long way down...

The ride was nice, my butt bones didn't hurt as much as in the past when we finished. Must be callusing. The surface was nice and smooth for the most part, but there were a couple of places where the connection from surface roadway to bridge surface wasn't complete. Saw more than one water bottle skittering off across the road when the bike hit the bump!

---

Sunday was run-day. I didn't expect much in the way of company, since as of Friday afternoon, I had received no responses to the run announcement. Given that, and my propensity for exploration, I loaded up the Nathan with 70 ounces, mixed a batch of Perpetuem liquid with chia seeds for nutrition in a couple of smaller hip bottles, and I was good for a decent length trip.

I had been out to 4th of July Lake a few times, always beautiful, but as an out and back, an anathema to my desire to tread new ground as much as possible. I had seen that there is a possible lasso with only 1 mile of repeated terrain possible and decided that since nobody was coming, I'd do it. 

Turns out, there were a couple of attendees. I left it up to them as to if they wanted to do the lasso or an out and back. Both elected to explore. Boy, was that a mistake on their parts!

Approaching Winnemucca Lake past Frog Lake. The women are barely visible. They kicked my butt.

Flowers on the descent into 4th of July Lake

Beauty along the trail. The flowers were pretty, too.

Descending to 4th of July Lake (visible to the right).

Where the HELL are you taking us??

The home stretch. Kind of. Still had about 4 miles, and a steep ascent ahead.

Things went pretty well, I was sharing my water and nutrition with one of the women, who, despite not bringing anything but a hand bottle, decided to do the whole thing. She's an amazingly strong runner, but she was still feeling the effects of the 50-miler from the weekend previous. During the ascent from the pit, I got lots of looks, and at one point they both semi-seriously clobbered me and fired me from ever leading another run. At about mile 9, I gave her the last of the water in my Nathan. It made for a dry finish. I offered to buy her breakfast once we were done. I figured it was the least I could do after screwing her so badly on the run.

Instead of breakfast, we did have a couple of classic Cokes and an order of fries at the Carson City Red Hut. Tasted awesome after the run!

4th of July Lake is at the flat spot 2/3 down on the big descent.

All in all, this was a great weekend. Exhausting, yes, but it's great to be out and about in this part of the globe this time of year. Remind me of that when it's not so nice come January.